🌟 Cues

• What is Sensation vs. Perception?
• How do we process sensory information?
• What are the differences between top-down and bottom-up processing?
• Understanding visual and auditory senses
• What are the three body senses?

🗒️ Notes

Introduction: Sensation is the process of detecting sensory information from the environment, while perception is the interpretation of that sensory data.

Sensation vs. Perception: Sensation involves raw data from sensory systems (e.g., light waves), while perception involves interpreting this data as meaningful objects or patterns (e.g., a cube or an old/young woman).

Processing Sensory Information:

• Bottom-Up Processing: Starts with raw sensory data sent to the brain for analysis.
• Top-Down Processing: Starts with higher-level brain functions that work down to interpret sensory information.

Sensory Processing Steps:

1. Sensory detection by receptors in sense organs (e.g., eyes, ears).
2. Transduction: Energy is converted into neural signals.
3. Coding: Sensory inputs are converted into different sensations.
4. Sensory Reduction: Filtering sensory information before sending it to the brain.

Thresholds: Absolute Threshold is the smallest detectable stimulus, while the Difference Threshold (JND) is the minimal change needed to notice a difference. Subliminal perception exists, but there is little evidence for its persuasive effects.

Sensory Adaptation: Decreased sensitivity to constant stimulation, such as smokers failing to notice the smell of smoke on themselves.

Vision: Light waves are the stimulus for sight, and the visual system processes these waves to create the experience of vision.

Audition: Sound waves create sensations of pitch (wavelength) and loudness (amplitude).

Other Senses: Olfaction (smell), gustation (taste), and the three body senses (touch, temperature, pain) involve specialized receptors and processing in the brain.

Understanding Perception: Perception involves selection (what we focus on), organization (forming patterns), and interpretation (making sense of those patterns). It can be influenced by illusions and perceptual sets.

📝 Summary

Sensation is the process of detecting sensory information, while perception organizes and interprets that information into meaningful patterns. Sensory processing involves detecting stimuli, converting them to neural signals, and reducing excess information. Our understanding of the world is shaped by sensory adaptation, thresholds, and perceptual processes such as selection, organization, and interpretation. The way we see, hear, and experience other senses depends on specialized sensory systems that communicate with the brain, creating our conscious experience of the world.